subject: Facing The Challenges After Medical School [print this page] If you happen to graduate from medical school around 1955, you should find that you were so lucky as that was the time of abounding opportunities especially in great places not to mention great salary packages. But one of the graduates wasn't as lucky. He found himself in an uncertain career that offers little pay and so much competition even if he is a medical school graduate.
Once seen as a golden profession, doctors have less autonomy and the once sacrosanct doctor patient relationship has been corrupted as managed care grabbed a stronger hold of the medical market. A lot of the medical school graduates will soon know where they shall have their postgraduate careers.
Matching day is great for those who find themselves ending up in their preferred hospitals. For those who aren't as lucky, this is nothing but a grim check on the reality of things that await them.
Some surveys reveal that too many physicians and medical schools abound. Suitable jobs in their fields of specialty can barely be found by around 10 percent of specializing doctors according to a study done by the American medical association. A company funded study results recommended that medical schools must close due to the excessive surplus of doctors and also stated that they should admit 20 to 25 percent less students.
A known center for medicine in Boston that also teaches hospital for a university will surely cut work opportunities that will affect many doctors. A doctor who is a dean for a prestigious medical school states that back then, doctors did not face a situation like this. He adds that there were tons of positions available for those who wanted to pursue specific fields.
In the past several years, many among the students graduating medicine choose to partake in generalist fields which include paediatrics, family practice and internal medicine because they have observed the steady growth these areas have had since the early 1990s.
Specialty fields of study and careers which include anaesthesiology, diagnostic radiology and psychiatry see a plunge as noted by the national resident matching program. A good example would be the dramatic downtrend among the number of students who would opt to enter into the field of anaesthesiology.
Due to the limited work opportunities available, a graduating med student had second thought towards venturing into anaesthesiology. They are like a can of sardines out there now, he notes. But then, a lady doctor who is also among the board members of the American medical association states that the reported excess of doctors is not necessarily true especially in the rural areas like in her town where the demand for doctors is great.
The lady doctor also continues that many of the brightest students refuse to get into the medical field because of the gloom and doom stories in this field, which are mostly not even true. Even when faced with such uncertainty, many of these young physicians are confident perhaps spurred by the influence of TV shows with medical themes that also increase the appreciation of people towards medical schools.
This female doctor still puts her profession on a pedestal saying that it is still the best job in the world despite the fact that they no longer make the money they used to make or work under the autonomy those before them used to have.
